Gopher Football
Gopher athletics director Joel Maturi has created a Gopher Nation. Yes, a Gopher Nation.
Just about a year ago Maturi was involved in “œI’m not going there-gate”, which was followed up by a mass exodus of the women’s basketball roster, which was followed by doubt around whether or not TCF Bank Stadium would get state funding, which was followed by Coach Glen Mason telling the media and fans that we are still rebuilding in year 10 of his tenure. Just about a year ago, we didn’t have a Gopher Nation ““ heck, we didn’t have a Gopher neighborhood.
I admit I have been frustrated at times with Joel. I didn’t like the way the men’s tennis scandal was dealt with (and I use the word “œscandal” loosely as I realize only about six of us care about Gopher tennis). I didn’t like the way Mason’s contract extension was handled in December of 2005. I didn’t like the way he dealt with the men’s basketball coaching situation last March and the comments he made in his famous press conference where he gave one of the most ill-faded attempts at a vote of confidence and ultimately created a horrid lame duck season which was unfair to the current staff, players and fans.
But here we are ““ a year later. The women’s basketball program is stabilized. TCF Bank Stadium is a reality. And with that, two new coaches have been hired in the last three months to run the Gopher football and basketball programs, both shocking hires and both shaking the status quo of Gopher athletics at its core. And the person at the center of it all is one Joel Maturi.
Maturi knew that the security of his own job would be determined by his handling of the football and basketball coaching searches. With quite a bit of interest from top young coordinators at some of the nation’s most prestigious programs in becoming the Gopher football coach, Maturi went with a gut feeling about a first-time head coach who few Gopher fans knew of before his hiring. And what a first few months it has been. Coach Brewster swooped in to town, touted trips to Pasadena, talked about recruiting until he turned maroon in the face, made the rounds in the media, packed an overflow record crowd for signing day, reconnected with Gopher legends, and created a tremendous amount of excitement for a program that needed to hear why it COULD win and why it WILL win instead of why it couldn’t.
But Maturi’s job was only half over as the Gopher basketball coaching vacancy still needed to be filled after the late November firing of Coach Dan Monson. The once proud Gopher basketball program suffered its first 20-game losing season in its history, first sub- .500 home record in decades and mustered a mere eight conference wins the past two years. While the media attention centered on Maturi hiring an up-and-coming mid-major coach and how the recent openings at Michigan and Iowa were making the job search increasingly difficult, Maturi shocked the college basketball world by stealing a former national champion winning coach and one of the winningest coaches in college basketball over the last 10 years from one of the nation’s most historic programs.
And just like that, Coach Brewster and the football program are rivaled in local excitement by Coach Smith and the basketball program. For the first time in years, Gopher football and Gopher basketball are simultaneously creating off-season excitement.
Both programs have a lot of work to do to reach the expectations that each new coach brings to their respective program, but both programs can sell hope. Hope is a powerful tool and hope is back in Dinkytown.
But this hope wouldn’t have been possible without the guts and hiring strategy of Joel Maturi. Because of Joel Maturi, we have a Gopher Nation.